


Hold On Tight With Open Arms

by Molly_Hats



Category: Birds of Prey (Comic), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Robin (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Kidnapping, League of Assassins - Freeform, New 52, World Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-04-05 03:52:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14035593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: Roy Harper has his life suspiciously together.  Naturally, that’s the cue for his supervillain ex to kidnap him for a mission to save their daughter—a daughter he didn’t know existed.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Lian return story I seriously hoped we were going to get from Titans, and that it looks like we won’t get.
> 
> Title from Daredevil by Fiona Apple

Roy Harper snapped to consciousness, but keeps his eyes closed, biding his time and analyzing his position. He knew this sort of situation, perhaps more intimately than he would like. The first thing he felt was the ropes around his wrists, the chair shoving painfully into his back. It was cold on his bare skin. Great. Never a good sign when he woke up shirtless.

“Come now, Roy,” cooed a familiar female voice. “I know you’re awake.”

Roy opened his eyes slowly to adjust for any light, his head lolling to see his captor. “Jade.”

Jade Nguyen grinned, a wide, frightening smirk that had earned her the name Cheshire. “There you are.” She strode toward him, her sharp green fingernails gleaming in the light of a single lightbulb suspended above Roy’s head. Her dress, cut high on the sides to give her legs freedom of movement, seemed an impossibly acidic shade of green. Roy couldn’t see much of the space behind her in the shoddy light, but from the shadows he guessed they were in an average-size room. 

“So,” he said, his tongue heavy. “Who’d you nab me for?”

“So quick to business?” Jade teased with a quirk of one eyebrow.

“I learned my lesson last time,” Roy almost growled. The scars from their last night together seemed to throb on his back, even though they should have healed weeks ago. He was probably just imagining it.

Jade gently caressed his cheek with one of her sharp nails, nearly breaking the skin. Roy didn’t flinch. “I wanted to talk to you about a personal matter,” she said.

“Last time that happened you stole my evidence and dosed me with some of it,” Roy snapped. 

Stay strong, stay strong, someone’ll come. And if they don’t, well, it’s not like anybody would miss him that much. He fought with Dick. He had never been particularly close to Wally. Ditto with Garth. Lilith seemed to avoid him--probably annoyed by the constant emotion that emanated from him in waves of self-hatred and protectiveness and anger. And Donna, well, Donna deserved better. Maybe if he died this way, instead of in the way Troia said, Diana would believe the future had changed. Maybe Donna would get to wander the world and save lives. Adopt some new Wondergirls, or find someone and settle down, be Wonder Woman or a photographer or a stay at home mom or whatever the hell she wanted. She deserved a better life than he could ever help her make--

Roy was shocked to attention by Jade’s hand in his hair, yanking his head back so that it nearly touched the metal chair back. “You told me you prefer clear matters of right or wrong,” Jade said. “Simple choices. Heroic choices.”

Roy’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head as he tried to watch her. 

“Like saving your daughter.”

Despite himself, Roy’s breath caught, and his pupils snapped back to the center of his eyes. “My what?”

Jade shoved Roy’s head forward so that he could see the picture she held out in front of him. It showed Jade carrying a red-haired girl. The child giggled, and Jade looked down at her with a tenderness even Roy had never seen.

“Our daughter. Her name is Lian.” Her voice was soft, but her grip remained firm. Her fingernails dug into the photograph, and Roy was sure that they would at the very least leave dents in the paper. “She will be two years old in October.”

“Were you planning on telling me about her?” Roy asked.

“No,” Jade said, with uncharacteristic bluntness. “I wasn’t going to tell you anything about her until she was old enough to be a capable threat. A ‘sidekick,’ as you and your friends would call it.”

“What changed your mind?”

“She was kidnapped. I returned from a job to find her caretakers mutilated and her cradle empty.” 

“Motive? What would they want you to do that you wouldn’t do already for the right price?” Roy asked, the legitimacy of the question undercutting the barb.

“They didn’t want me,” Jade snarled. “They just wanted her.”

Roy’s brows knitted. “Why would they? Why would they care enough to kill assassins--oh don’t even, I know you wouldn’t have anyone less as a babysitter. What, you hired Mary Jo up the street to watch over your fledgling assassin?”

Jade hesitated. “You are right. I hired women I trusted, despite their talents. They had no family to threaten. They were loyal to me. I taught them most of what they knew.”

“Are you even sad that they’re dead?” Roy asked. He wasn’t sure why he was antagonizing her, why he wasted time and energy on this, but he knew he couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. 

“Roy. Don’t do this for me. Save our daughter because she’s an innocent. Isn’t that what you do? ‘Black and white cases without moral complexity are refreshing’?” She placed the photograph in his lap. 

He stared into the girl in the photograph’s half-closed eyes for a moment, his hair hanging down as his head drooped. Then, he raised it. “Fine. But when we find her, I get custody. I’m taking her far away from your world. She’ll have family with the Titans. And the Titans? Will keep her safer than your babysitters ever could.”

He stared into her eyes, daring her to argue, although he knew she wouldn’t. Even if she didn’t agree, she wouldn’t bring it up now. She’d wait until the mission was over, Lian was in her arms, and she could simply sneak away again without negotiating. (For a mercenary, she really hated reasoned negotiating.)

Jade finally nodded. “And how do I know you won’t turn me in?” She asked.

“You don’t. Any more than I know you won’t stab me in the neck with a hypodermic needle and leave me delirious in an alley in New Delhi. I need you. You need me. We’ve got contacts and skills the other doesn’t.”

Jade kept eye contact. 

Roy smiled. “Like old times. Both with a lot to lose and no good insurance. But a common goal.” He moved his shoulder as if to shake her hand despite his own being tied behind him. “Deal?”

Jade eyed him for a few more moments before saying, “Deal.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade and Roy travel to the turbulent nation of Transbelvia to seek an old contact of Jade’s.

They took a private plane, not that Roy knew that before they were almost on board. Jade explained that she hated airport security, and imagined Roy did as well considering his weapon choices. Roy was less than enthusiastic when he realized she’d be piloting, but eventually settled in after a long period of peace and silence.

He glanced over from the passenger’s seat at Jade, who ignored him. She stared out into the clouds as her hands moved at the controls.

“Are we there yet?” Roy offered, slouching in the passenger seat. 

“Not nearly,” Jade said, face mostly blank.

“Anything you want me to do?” Roy asked.

“Be quiet.”

“Right,” Roy said, crossing his arms over his chest before briefly sitting up again. “Music? I’ve got some of my old songs on me--”

“Shut up!” Jade snapped, irritation finally showing through.

“Look, you were the one that kidnapped me,” Roy pointed out, throwing one arm up at the elbow and shrugging his shoulders up. “I reserve the right to complain.”

Jade glared out the front window. “If we crash, you will not survive intact.”

Roy held his arms up in surrender. “You never told me where exactly we were going.”

“Transbelvia. I have a contact outside of Tbliska who knows the League of Assassins--I’d bet that they’re the ones that took our daughter.”

“They’re a part of the League?”

Jade actually chuckled. “I doubt she would see it in such simple terms. Her allegiance is always to her people. If any assassin will help a mother find her child, it’s her.”

Roy’s brow furrowed. “Who is she?”

“Dava Sbörsc.”

Roy sat up straight, his feet uncrossing as he leaned forward to look into Jade’s face. “She’s alive?”

Jade laughed. “Last I checked. You never know, right?” She glanced at the dashboard and said, “get ready for landing, Roytoy.”

——-

They touched down awhile later. Jade handed him his passport. “We’re married.” 

“Never took you for the marriage type,” Roy said. 

Jade rolled her eyes. “It’s an easy description that doesn’t raise eyebrows—unlike siblings would.”

“Oh no, it’s fine, we just need to flesh out the backstory,” Roy said. “We can’t pull off newlyweds, obviously, but we need an explanation for how little we know each other. Ooh! This is our last ditch effort to make it work and avoid divorce.”

“You’re very lucky you’re hot,” Jade said. She examined her nails, and Roy could swear she smiled slightly as she continued, “But that’s a reasonable explanation.”

“Best lies are close to the truth, right?” 

Jade shoved his bag into his hands. “Come on.”

He grabbed the handle and trailed after her, smiling despite himself.

Jade waved all those who came over to interrogate them off with some combination of flirting, intimidation, and bribes. He remembered why he was so attracted to her--still was, honestly. When she wanted to be, she could be a force of nature. It helped that she was amazing with languages.

Jade rejoined him, a green-eyed kid who kind of reminded Roy of a young Jason in tow. “Ignác here is going to lead us to the Red Sister,” she said. The kid led them to a jeep and motioned them inside. 

Roy hesitated.

“What are you waiting for, darling?” Jade asked. “Hop in.”

Reluctantly, Roy hopped into the back seat, Jade in the passenger, Ignác driving.

Jade and Ignác talked back and forth in a language Roy could not understand or even identify. During a lull, he leaned forward and whispered to Jade, “The Red Sister?”

Jade glanced back at him. “Dava is not a common name, but it is commonly feared here,” she said. “No one calls her by it in the open.” 

Ignác shushed her. 

\--------

The jeep rumbled up the mountain path, finally coming to a stop when the road did, too. They hopped out of the vehicle, Roy eyeing the steep mountain slopes—more like cliffs—surrounding them. 

“Lemme guess,” Roy said, “We gotta climb.”

Ignác asked Jade something, and she answered. He said something else, Jade answered, and he laughed.

“What’d he say?” Roy asked. 

“I translated, then he asked why on earth I dated you. I said you had nice arms.”

“...I’m getting mixed signals here.”

“Roy, when have we _not_ given each other mixed signals?” Jade smiled, her hand rising to his face as if to stroke his cheek with the flat of her hand. 

He flinched away. “So...are we climbing, or not?” Roy asked.

“Should be no trouble for you,” Jade said. “How heavy is the draw on your bow, again?”

Roy sighed and craned his neck to see the top. “Let’s go, then.”

——

“You haven’t told me,” Roy said, swinging himself to another handhold and shifting his feet to match, “why you think it’s the league of assassins.”

“Simple math,” Jade said. “I betrayed them, you escaped and fought them, and your friend tried to replace the Demon’s Head and then cut him off from power,” she listed off. She planted her feet in a crag in the mountainside.

“But they didn’t kill her,” Roy said.

“Of course not,” Jade dismissed. “They wouldn’t, not right away. They always need more assassins—there’s a high turnover rate in that industry. They’d probably simply turn her into one of their child soldiers.”

“We can’t let that happen.”

Jade eyed him, then grinned.

“What?” He asked.

She shook her head and turned back to the mountain. “Keep climbing, hot stuff.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody else remember Dava? She was great.
> 
> Fun fact, as far as I can tell, Transbelvia/Krasna-Volny appears in a grand total of 5 issues: one of Birds of Prey, and one 4-issue arc in Robin. A shame honestly. I went through all of them and took copious notes, then cross referenced for whatever cultural references and real-world touchstones they probably used to flesh out the country. 
> 
> Yes, I’m a nerd, why do you ask?
> 
> If you find any other references, hmu! I’m way too invested at this point.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy meets Dava and agrees to a mission

Roy finally threw his arm onto the ledge at the top and pulled himself up. Nearby at nearly the same time, Jade did the same. They scrambled to their feet, Roy edging away from the cliff but letting Jade take the lead.

Roy looked around. Up here, his longish red hair caught in the wind, whipping around his head and distracting him. He looked up past a handful of curious Belvians to see the mountain was lined with trees, small cabins, and some metal doors that looked like they led to caves or bunkers.

Jade pulled a baseball cap--his baseball cap--from somewhere and stuck it onto her head, pushing down her voluminous hair. She stepped forward. The small crowd parted to make way for a young woman. 

She was surprisingly young—21 at most. She had bobbed red hair and wore a long black trench coat. A red shirt showed through the coat’s open front, and her boots matched her hair. She reminded him of Batwoman, to an extent, although her skin didn’t have the unnatural pallor of the Gothamite. “Jade Nguyen. It’s been a long time.”

Jade grinned at her and tipped her hat. The woman--it had to be Dava--mirrored the gesture in the air.

“What brings you to Transbelvia?” Dava asked. “And who’s the boy?” She glanced briefly at Roy, sizing him up.

“He’s the father of my daughter,” Jade said. “And I’m here because she’s been kidnapped.”

“Lian?” 

“Come on!” Roy interjected, throwing an arm up. “You told the assassin lady you haven’t seen in years but not me?”

They ignored him. 

“I suspect the League,” Jade said. “I came here to see if you could prove my suspicions.”

Dava glanced between Roy and Jade, to the horizon. “I haven’t contacted the league in 2 months.”

“What happened 2 months ago?” Roy asked.

“Every six months, two of us go to the League,” Dava explained. “We teach, we learn, we recruit. Kajetán and Marián left in April.”

“Can you contact them?” Jade asked. 

Dava nodded. “We need information, though.”

“What do you mean?” Roy asked. 

“They won’t take kindly to being interrupted for a problem unrelated to the cause,” Jade explained. 

Dava nodded. “We need something to give them in exchange.”

“Okay. What? And how?” 

Dava rummaged through her coat’s pockets. “I have an idea.” She stared directly at Roy. “I need you.”

“Really? ‘Cause Jade’s kinda the jealous type--”

“He’s yours,” Jade said calmly.

Roy blinked. “That settles that.”

:::

Roy hopped out of the car and strolled along the street. Tbliska was a pretty town, but the shells of abandoned houses and other buildings still lurked around the city center. Roy assumed that there wasn’t enough money to rebuild them, since it had been several years since there was bombing here. He raised his phone and snapped a photo of one of the buildings, then kept walking. 

Eventually, he came across an area surrounded by a chain-link fence, with a large warning posted on the gate. He could gather the meaning without being able to read it, but pretended ignorance, walking closer and taking a picture. Two guards began to move toward him, and he watched them from the corner of his eyes.

One of the guards yelled something in the language--Krasny? Belvian? Jade had explained that the difference between them was minimal to the point of being dialects of each other. 

Roy glanced over in confusion before turning back to his camera, playing the dumb tourist for all he was worth. He reached out to touch the chain link fence, only to be roughly yanked away by the other guard.

“Do not touch! On ground!” One of the guards shouted in heavily accented English, pointing a gun at Roy’s head.

Roy dropped the camera and held his arms up, slowly lowering onto his knees. “What’d I do? Guys? What’d I do?”

“No photos!” The guard said emphatically.

Roy stared at the pin on his chest, the insignia of Regiment Terminisk: a skull with a bullet hole through the brain. “What’s that?” He asked.

“Quiet,” English-speaker said.

“Sorry, but what’s with the skull logo?” Roy said, raising his hands above his head obediently. “I mean, kinda hard to say you’re good guys when you’re walking around with a bullet hole skull on your shirt, right?”

The soldier who didn’t speak English barked something at the other one, who gave what Roy assumed was a translation. 

The first one raised his shotgun and slammed the butt across Roy’s face. He spun with the force, landing on the ground on his raised arms. “I suppose tourism isn’t how you’re planning to dig yourself out of your mess of an economy,” he snarked to the dirt. 

One of them yelled in surprise. Roy looked up to see him fall to the ground. His buddy raised his gun, but almost immediately collapsed, his bullet zooming harmlessly into the sky.

“Nobody messes with his face but me,” Jade said to the English-speaker.

Roy scrambled up.

“The world won’t miss them,” Dava said. She stood ramrod straight, a rifle in her arms, barrel to the sky. She kicked the second soldier’s body, a bit of the blood from his chest wound sticking to her boot. It blended in.

“Are they dead?” Roy asked.

“That would defeat the purpose,” Dava said. “They are our leads.”

 _The Titans are gonna kill me,_ Roy thought to himself. 

Dava hauled the non-English speaker up and started yelling at him rapid-fire in Krasny-Belvian. 

“Are you alright?” Jade asked, running a non-poisoned finger along the bruise forming on his face.

“Fine,” Roy said, brushing her off. “Part of the plan.”

Jade nodded. “I just did not expect you to follow the plan.”

“Excuse me?”

“Please, Roy,” Jade rolled her eyes. 

“No, I want to know, what are all these plans I didn’t follow through on?” Roy demanded.

Jade meaningfully glanced over at Dava before saying, “sure, we have time.”

“Oh, please—“

An unmeasured amount of time later, Dava walked over. “He will live,” she answered Roy’s unspoken question. He made an effort to not outwardly respond. “I have information for the others.”


	4. Chapter 4

Roy crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. Across from him, facing the steel door Dava had disappeared behind, Jade casually filed her fingernails. It was rather disconcerting, temporarily transforming her nails from lethal weapons coated in ghastly concoctions to mere cosmetic features waiting for polish to complete a fashion statement. 

Behind the thick rock wall he was leaning on, Dava was allegedly swapping intel with her buddies in the League of Assassins, Kajetán and Marián. She’d been doing so for 30 minutes. 

Finally, the door slid open, and Dava stepped out. Roy stood up straight, but Jade continued to file her nails.

“They are in 'Eth Alth'eban, so they don’t have as much knowledge of children or recruits specifically,” Dava said.

“So, what, you swapped half an hour’s worth of nothing?” Roy asked in frustration and disbelief. 

Jade raised her eyes from her hands to eye Roy, the file stilling. “ _Much_ ,” Jade pointed out. 

Dava nodded. “They did tell me the places she might be. Easier to show you, come with me.” She waved at them to come with her as she stepped back into the room, clicking on the light. 

The room was wallpapered in maps, layered over each other at the sides and the corners. At the center of one wall was a map of the world with lines drawn through its oceans and over its continents, some of them stuck with pins mid-route. One large, central map centered on the Balkans, but spread from Tunisia to Ukraine. Around it were erected obligatory maps of the continents. On another wall, the maps grew more and more local and obviously homemade. There was a street map of Tbliska itself from some time before the civil war, crudely updated in thin black marker, an obviously hand-drawn map of Transbelvia, and an actually professionally printed map of the Balkans on which the tiny nation’s title of “Krasna-Volny” had been scribbled out with a vengeance and replaced with “Transbelvia.” There were political maps, physical maps, mixtures of both.

Roy was almost impressed, taking all of it in as Dava walked to the wall of global political maps. She grabbed a wooden pointer off of the table at the center of the room and tapped the horn of Africa. “The place they take kids under seven is in the Danakil Desert. They don’t know anything else.” The pointer circled a large swath of land. 

“Nothing more specific?” Jade asked. “How big is that, anyway?”

Dava shook her head. “That was all they could give me,” she snapped. “We have our own problems, here.”

“Thank you, Dava,” Roy said quickly. “This is a huge help. Good luck with your...war,” he finished clumsily.

Dava made eye contact with Jade, and they shared a look that he was pretty sure was at his expense. Whatever kept them from killing each other or him.

“Find your daughter,” Dava said, somewhere between a well-wish and a command.

“We will,” Jade said. “Come on, Roy.”

:::

They were driving to the tiny Tbliska airport to fly to their next destination when Roy spoke again, the first words that weren’t “thank you,” “excuse me,” “yes,” “no,” or “sounds good.” 

“I have contacts who could help us comb the desert,” he offered. “Might take some cajoling, but I can probably get them to help.”

Jade studied him out of the corner of her eyes before flicking her gaze back to the road. 

“Gonna take that as a go-ahead,” Roy said. “Pull over. I need to make a phone call.”

:::

Dinah Lance untied her boots and tossed them one by one across the floor. She flopped onto the bed. She’d have to change out of her suit, she knew, or she would definitely regret it, but the bed was _so comfortable_ and she could wait a bit to get up...

Her cell phone rang, not a number she knew and had meticulously programmed with one of millions of ringtones. She let it ring for 30 seconds before sighing and getting up. Anybody that tenacious probably needed to be heard out.

“Hello?” She answered.

“Dinah? I need your help. It’s Roy.” 

“Where on earth are you?” She yawned.

“Transbelvia. It’s a long story. Are you still working for Oracle?”

“You’re in Transbelvia?” she repeated.

On the other end, Roy gave something similar to a sigh. “You know, in the Balkans? Civil war with the Krasna-Volny people? Ollie talked about it for like 2 news cycles.” 

Dinah’s eyes nearly rolled back in her head as she remembered. “Right. You need me to go there?”

“We’re just leaving, actually. We’re looking for a League of Assassins stronghold in the Danakil Desert, but it’s big and we can’t search it on foot.” 

“Gotcha. I’ll ask Oracle, but if it’s the League of Assassins you’re gonna get help whether you like it or not.”

“Right. I’d rather it be you, if anyone.”

Dinah smiled, but was interrupted by another yawn. “You’re--ahhww--sweet. I’ll talk to O.”

“Thanks, Dinah.”

“Bye, Roy. See you around.” 

She hung up, then rummaged around in her dresser drawer for a set of communicators. “Oracle? Oracle, pick up, I need your expertise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday, I might explain my divergent timeline from Rebirth (spinning out of New 52, but starting with Rebirth for the most part because small patch retcons are easier). It includes Barbara being Oracle again through some yet-unwritten BATBOP rewrite and this storyline being Arsenal's storyline from Titans instead of what we got in #20-the annual. 
> 
> I have no illusions, this is not the "correct" way, this is just how i would've written it. And like those little author's notes we used to do before they became captain obvious, I don't own DC, or its characters, or have any control whatsoever over what they do.
> 
> That said, Abnett needs to get it together and figure out what he's trying to say, because he's reversing continuity he set up mere issues before and that's kind of a new low.


End file.
